drawing from the future

I'm thinking about the ways in which I can honor my daughter's coming of age in a way that has meaning for her (and for me).  I do not feel an obligation to do this within a jewish form, although that expectation is there in some way in my family.  The combination of being adopted, and being adopted into a family that has so much disconnection and non-continuity in it makes for a situation where I don't know how to go back to find something to give my daughter; I feel a need to move forward and create something forward and in the future to give to her. That seems right; it fits.

I am reading my sociology textbook and am totally fascinated by the way family structure is explained within the context of ideas and values being socially constructed.  Taking a step back and seeing all of the things we take for granted as social beings not as facts, not as givens, but as social constructs that we made up and choose to persist seems mindblowing.  This idea touches me in a deep way, and I suspect it has something to do with me being adopted, not knowing my history.  There is no legacy for me to carry on or draw from.  I am ultra aware that I create anew all the time, because its in my face.  I don't have a mother to turn to, to ask how to do things. My father is alive but we have not been in communication for a significant amount of time.  I hold the rest of my family far away from me (except my sister) in order to survive and not spiral into total dysfunction.  I have been forced to decide how I want to create my life every day with little familial reference points.  Its the orphan consciousness inside of me.  I suppose it gives me a strength in some ways, yet it seems shaky--there's no bedrock; I'm constantly reaching up into the air to pick out what and how I want to create.  I guess either way there is no guarantee that the decisions we make are right, but in being a parent myself, I am constantly being forced to ask myself if the decisions I make are the best for my children, and that is where the ground falls away and I'm flying and I'm 'winging it'.  Maybe all parents feel that way? I don't know, I just know that there's a built-in freedom to the new-ness.  That's a part of it that I like.